The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-12-10

compassion the prisoner discharged
from prison must fall into kind and
wise hands to help him live better
life; If the children of the better classes
have a Sunday-school, then must come
mission-schools for the poorer children.
In this architecture of the soul our age
is panied to see two columns of unequal
size and of thoughtless design, the one
of marble, the other of pine wood; one
standing erect, the other far from per-
pendicular.
Disparity in social life, seems once to
have been pleasing to the men in power.
The Lazarus at the gate of the rich
man helped the man of wealth to real
ize his own pomp and circumstance.
Men in high place called the common
poor by such names as ''dogs" and held
their comfort and even life asnot worthy
of thought. The Hebrews looked
upon captives in war as being as truly
property as were fish taken with a net
in the sea. The Hebrew, and Greek,
and Roman markets were as we'll stock
ed with slave-men, women, boys and
girls, as they were with the game and
fruits of the season. All rights expired
at the confines of small state over
that line an educated man, if captured,
became beast of burden, woman
became achattel. In all that long dreary
period there was little complaint about
wages, because it was not thought nee
essary that the working class should
have good food or good clothing. The
symmetry of architecture, statuary, and
poetry, had not yet touched upon hui
man life.
Horace says that "if in painting I
shall paint mans face, and add to it a
horses neck, you would all laugh" but
it did not occur to Horace that if he
should hitch man or woman to pillow
and exact from such slave horse,s
labor, and without pay-that the spec
tators ought to weep over the incongru-
ity. Our age is the first to express
boldly hatred of disparity. 1t per-
ceives it, measures it, scorns it. 1t
hates it less in art than in life. All
would rather see woman's face paint
ed to horses neck and name, than see
a living woman bearing horses bur-
dens. The modern mind takes more
comprehensive survey of society and
asks for spiritual harmony, a harmony
of humanity as well as harmony in
music and literature. The educated,
Industrious, well-clothed workman looks
so well that the drunken man in the
gutter has become a most painful sight.
Woman has become so noble and beau
tiful by education that the sight of a
profane or drunken woman is intoler-
able. Thus the temperance cause is
not wholly religious, it is an effort in
search of the harmony of picture or
of number of voices. 1t is a demand
for proportion in the living temple.
In England until very recently there
were agricultural gangs whose condi-
ton was more wretched than ever was
that of the American slaves. Whole
families would rise at four in the morn
ing that they might walk five miles to
the farm of some landlord to work
twelve hours for the most miserable
wages. Little children thus awakened
by force in the morning, and having
walked five miles, joined in the hard
toll. All walked back five miles when
the work was done, and, having had a
poor supper at home, slept in heap on
beds Of straw, to be aroused at four to
repeat the awful experience. In those
days death was the best friend of boy
and girl. Recently the heart of Eng
land compared such scenes with the
better English picture, and with the
scenes in America, and compelled the
law to blot out the agricultural gang,
to take away the neck of beast from
the face of the woman and the child.
Thus reform once begun in society
must spread in all directions, and the
virtue and piety of an age must like
water rise to level when all the sepa-
rate parts are connected in some way
to a main body. Each branch of reform
makes the adjoining barbarism seem
more repulsive. The American Board
of Foreign Missions is now assailed
each year by the scholars and philan-
thropists who wish better hope to be
offered to the heather millions. The
old conception of hell was not as dis
cordant once as it now is. When men
used to torture each other, when hus-
band could kill his wife or child if he
saw fit, when Henry VIII. could cut
off women's heads, when Elizabeth
could imprison Mary eighteen years and
at last cut off her head from jealousy, a
hell of literal fire was not much out of
tune with the common internal jangle
of earth.
Now the times have become so
changed that many have gone to the
American Board with a request that
the condition of the heather after death
be permitted to share in the new gen.
eral adjustment of pain and pleasure.
The old bitter tastes badly beside the